Name: Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients: 1 pound sweet potatoes; ½ cup butter; 1 cup white sugar; 1 tablespoon cinnamon; 1 teaspoon nutmeg; 4 eggs, separated; juice and rind of 1 lemon; 1 cup water

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Steam or boil the sweet potatoes until done, then run them through a colander.
In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the egg yolks, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, and lemon rind to the mixture.
Gradually beat in the sweet potatoes until light and fluffy.
Stir in the water, then gently fold in the beaten egg whites.
Pour the mixture into a pie dish; do not use a top crust.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together539 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together414 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg):

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits about as well
Coconutfits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.